Parfoomy or Smell My Assets!
by G.E Waldo
Summary: Setting: No particular time save that Wilson is single and trying to date, and House is single and smelling Wilson trying to date. In this, Sam and Cuddy are both already romance history, and House and Wilson are back living together in the condo .


****

Parfoomy

or

Smell My Assets!

(in response to Slash Fest prompt at greglovesjimmy)

By Genie Waldo

Setting: No particular time save that Wilson is single and trying to date, and House is single and smelling Wilson trying to date. (In this, Sam and Cuddy are both already romance history, and House and Wilson are back living together in the condo - as it should be!)

Pairing: H/W (duh)

Rating: Sexual innuendo. Camping.

Prologue:

"Hey, Maurice."

"Yeah?"

"We got an order, big guy."

"You're friggen kidding me?"

"Nope. Two bottles of _Un Homme _."

Fabuleux

"I can't believe there are suckers out there who actually want to buy that crap. Frenchified parfoomy from Bulgaria. There's one born every minute."

"But it's supposed to work. Human body chemistry, you know, hormonal formula or some shit like that - drives women crazy."

"Right. Like my farts drive 'em. Hey - wait a second, we're out of _Un Homme Fabuleux_."

"What do we do?"

"I got it. We can ship 'em some of the other."

"What's the other?"

"_Un Mignon Gai._"

"Don't you think he'll notice? That one's for gays, isn't it?"

"Gays, shmays - what's the difference? All this swamp water smells the same anyway."

XO

So far he'd been a little...disappointed with the results. Wilson lifted his shirt collar to his nose, as close as he could draw it without choking himself, while he walked down the halls of Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. He failed to detect whether his new purchase had worn off or not. It was impossible to tell. There was nothing to smell.

Wilson wandered almost aimlessly. He should have known the stuff was just a racket. Eighty bucks he had forked over for two tiny bottles of the hormonal based men's cologne. Complete duds. _Un Homme Fabuleux. A Fabulous Male_. That oughta' attract a female or two, right?

All morning so far the only person of the female persuasion he'd been able to draw was Georgina the cleaning lady, and she was fifty-seven, looked sixty-seven, smoked like a chimney and, he suspected, regularly sipped cheap scotch from a small flask she kept in her apron pocket. And she'd come all the way into his office this time. Turned out she was only looking for his trash basket.

The results of his wasted eighty bucks had been less than flattering. And now here he was, finished with his patients, finished his rounds, finished with his paper work, and had absolutely nothing to do.

Oh well, a good laugh with House, or occasionally _at_ him, was always a fun way to kill an hour or so.

"Hey, House."

House didn't turn from his chalk board. "Shhhsh!" He said with an impatient scowl, "I'm thinking."

Ignoring his friend's wishes for the moment - "Well, let's go think ourselves up a cup of coffee, pie and some conversation. I'm bored out of my mind."

"How's that my problem?"

Wilson was not yet affronted. He'd been friends with House for nearly twenty years, and that specific House response was mild. Easily ignored. "Because I'm your best buddy."

House twisted himself halfway around to regard his friend with cool amusement. "Again - how is that my problem?"

"Because I'm the only person who buys your lunches or, as the case may be, coffee and pie. Come with me or this house of credit cards all comes crashing down."

House turned his back on the list of frustrating symptoms afflicting his newest patient. "Sold."

XO

The pie smelled delicious. The coffee's aroma, even this pitiful example of the beverage, was the perfect stone in the crown called Coffee Break.

House was leaning over and drawing in the fragrant bouquets of cherry rhubarb pie with real Devonshire cream, whipped into a thick, sweet goo. Then he smelled his own coffee, eyebrows on the rise in silent appreciation.

Wilson chewed his apple crumble. "I'm waiting for Juan Valdez to walk though that door and offer you a ride on his donkey."

"I'd take him up on it." House sniffed the air.

"What are you doing?"

*Sniff sniff* House's nose searched for it, his nostrils flaring. "Don't you smell it?"

"Smell what?"

House shook his head. "Don't know. Something...different. Old, but new. Odd, but familiar. I can't put my finger on it."

"What does it remind you of?"

House took a bite of his pie and licked his lips. "Really great..." He swallowed. Loudly smacked his lips. "..sex."

Wilson stopped chewing. "A _smell_ that reminds you of sex? Are you _sure_ that's just whipped cream?"

House ignored Wilson's attempt to gross him out. "Yes, and I don't know what it is. All I know is, it's making me feel _funny_ down there. And it smells like _wanting _sex, not the after-air of thanks-I-already-got-off."

"How can something _smell_ like wanting anything?"

"I don't know. That's what's weird."

"But you can't put your finger on it?"

"Not even my penis."

"Ickh. Mom always said you'd be a terrible influence."

"She dreams about me at night."

"Right. Perish the dramatically unpleasant thought, but maybe you're smelling your own unwashed shorts."

"Nope. Had a shower this morning, _mom_. Changed into the new boxers after and everything."

Wilson dropped his napkin and leaned over to pick it up off the floor. When he straightened up, he found himself staring into Houses two shocked blue eyes. House leaned over the table. Closer.

*sniff snuff*

Closer.

Wilson himself leaned further back, to distance himself from the unknown powers of House's olfactory senses. "House? What the hell are you doing?"

House stood and walked around the table, which required about two steps, leaned down and sniffed Wilson's hair. "Are you using a new conditioner?"

Wilson tried to shy away from his friend's intrusive nose. "No. Quit it."

But House was having none of it. Altogether ignoring Wilson's wishes, he buried his nose in the crook between the collar of Wilson's pressed shirt and his neck, causing an involuntary shiver to pass over Wilson from front to back. Trying hard to ignore his friend's scratchy, tickling beard against his skin, he tried to shake him off "House! You're making a scene."

House stood up, apparently momentarily satisfied with his smell detecting. "Holy crap," He said far too loudly and, without warning, leaned in once more. Closer than ever this time and deeply sniff-sniff-snuffing!

Wilson felt himself harden a little in his work pants. Shifting in his seat in order to ease the pressure on his cock, and shocked at his own unexpected physical reaction, Wilson snarled under his breath "House, I'm _warning_ you..."

"It's _you_." House all but shouted it. To Wilson's horror, every head in the cafeteria turned toward them. Wilson was certain the entire hospital wing had heard House, and probably Cuddy in her office, and possibly even his own mother in Chattanooga.

House, his voice sharp and clear, his lungs having the power and range of a mountain yodeler, said the dreaded words. "_You're_ the sex smell!"

Wilson hung his head in his hands, then glanced around. He could swear he had heard it echo this time.

"Keep your voice down!" Grabbing hold of House's jacket sleeve and giving it a violent yank, he made House sit back down. "Oh my god." Wilson glared across the table at House, furious with his friends' deliberate social gaffing. "House. I have _patients_ in this room. They just saw and heard everything." Out of the corner of his eye Wilson could see Misses Weinberger sitting four tables over. Her mouth was hanging open, and she got busy shushing her three children. Probably explaining to them that, yes, daddy's oncologist _is_ weird, but he's still a good doctor. "How am I supposed to treat them after a scene like that?"

"Come on. If that shit, what ever it is - _Eau' du Fuck Me_ - can do this to me, imagine how much _more_ your patients will love you?"

Wilson groaned. The cologne was worse than he thought. It had probably sat on the dealer's shelf for a decade and turned rancid in the bottle. House was probably drawn to the fact that the shit was turning to alcohol. Only _he_ still couldn't smell a thing. "It's this new cologne I bought on-line. Probably gone bad. I can't smell it but-"

"-but I can. Wow!" House leaned back. Shook his head. "That shit packs a wallop." House smiled stupidly across the table at his odoriferous friend. "I feel like a freshman about to be de-flowered."

Wilson winced. "Spare me the Porky's inspired visuals. I gotta' get rid of this skunk water. Jezuz, I used the damn stuff all _week_. It's on every one of my suits. I'm gonna' have to buy a whole new wardrobe."

"Since you're getting rid of it anyway, can I have that jacket?"

"Wha? - _no!"_

"But I feel we were meant for each other - the jacket and me I mean."

"House. Just..." Wilson abandoned his pie and walked away. He didn't notice that House followed.

XO

Wilson has his entire business wardrobe sent out to be cleaned. When it came back he called House into his bedroom.

House reluctantly sniffed the jacket Wilson held out to him. House waggled his eyebrows. "Are you trying to seduce me?"

"No. Just smell it. I had everything cleaned and I want to be sure there are no traces of it."

House frowned but sniffed again. "I smell nothing. It's gone."

Wilson breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank god that's over."

House cripped back down the hall, saying over his shoulder "Party pooper."

XO

Wilson went to bed - grumpy but relieved.

There was his computer, right there, sitting on the dining table, begging to be broken into. Not a man to resist a good thing, House promptly opened it up and hacked in. He typed in "Great buns" and was rewarded with a free pass into Wilson's most private e-correspondence.

His eye caught the email he was looking for. A no-name online backwater called Essence of Love Inc. House read under his breath "Un Homme Fabuleux". Using his cell phone, House dialed the eleven digit number and extension given, the expense of the call well worth his ever expanding need to smell the marvelous, mystical, non-smell all over Wilson once again. House let it ring.

A man's voice answered. Non-delicate. Warehouse bub, probably sitting on his fat behind slurping back a rum and coke from a thermos. "Essence." He said.

House provided the proper invoice number and asked a series of questions.

"Oh yes, Mister Wilson." Said the far away, falsely sincere voice at the other end of the world. "We shipped you Un Homme Fabuleux."

"Okay. Now tell me what you _really_ shipped me. Whatever it is, I want more of it."

"More?" The voice sounded very surprised. "How much more?"

"Six bottles."

His order filled by the hustler at the other end, House sent the money via credit card, plus shipping and handling, and sat back to wait the six to eight weeks for delivery.

XO

In eight weeks and a day, after Wilson went off to work and House feigned too sick to go in, he slipped into Wilson's bedroom and liberally sprayed the cologne in question all over Wilson's good suits. He did the same to his underwear and sock drawer. He had briefly considered dosing himself with the stuff, but tucked that idea away for future psychological and physical tortures of his male staff member's members.

But smelling the delicious odorless stuff on Wilson, making his own physical presence tickle and hunger - that was the idea. A stupendous turn-on. Eventually, of course, he'd need to take the experiment further - not that Wilson was an experiment, he reminded himself, but the seduction of Wilson with the help of Un Mignon Gai was the simply the first lap in a race to the climax, so-to-speak.

House got dressed, all the while eyeing the five little bottles sitting on his dresser top. "What the hell?" He snatched up one of the innocent looking vials and liberally applied on his chest, behind his ears, on the knees of his worn jeans, the inner seams of his thighs, the small of his back and his wrists. That's how women did it. The hot zones.

"Patient?" House asked as he entered his conference room. His team was already present.

"You're late." Chase commented.

"And you're cute." House said as he fetched a coffee, smiling at Chase's look of long suffering irritation.

House sat down and took a drink. "Patient?" He asked again.

"No change." Foreman answered, shoving the current test results over to his boss. Foreman raised his own mug to his lips, then paused half way, sniffing the air. He looked around. Sniffed his mug. Sniffed his sleeve. Then - "Do you smell it?" He asked the group.

"Smell what?" Thirteen asked.

House was delighted to see the stuff appeared to cause no reaction in Thirteen's smell center. Just to confirm - "You don't smell anything?"

She shook her head. "Can we discuss the patient?"

Now Chase sniffed. "Yeah. I do smell something. Um, but it's not so much a smell as a..." He searched for the right word.

"De-ja-vu?" Foreman suggested, sifting, trying to pin down what his nose was and was not telling him. "Not a smell. I mean, I don't smell anything but I feel,...something. I think." He shook his head. "Weird."

"What's up?" House asked.

"I don't know." Foreman said again, finally taking a sip of his coffee. "It's really strange."

House noted that Chase's ears were pink and he was shifting in his seat a little.

"Seat too hard?" House asked.

"No." Chase said, rather too quickly. "It's fine." He swallowed.

Foreman was eyeing House suspiciously, until House glared at him. "What?"

"Did you spike the coffee grounds or something?"

House leaned his head over the table. "Don't I always?"

Thirteen answered. "Not lately, thank god. Can we _please_ discuss the patient?"

Foreman wriggled on his chair. Setting his cup down and turning his attention to the work at hand. "I still think House has done something to the coffee, or the cream.."

"Or the bagels or cream cheese - or both." Taub said.

"Or the sugar bowl, or the air purifier." Chase offered.

"Yes." Thirteen said. "He sprayed psychotropic drugs on the fan blades. Mystery solved." Today, Thirteen clearly had no patience for her team mates, or her boss's, antics. "Patient's unconscious, BP still erratic..."

"But then House would be smelling something, too." Chase reasoned it out. "Unless he's only pretending _not_ to smell something."

"Oh my god." Thirteen sighed. "You're playing into his game. House is baiting you, and you're rising to it, you idiots." She crossed her arms and sat back, abandoning her attempts to work.

"The patient is stable." Taub said, usually the doctor who preferred his attention to be on work and not personal or social engaging. "We can discuss this for a minute or two."

"Give me a break." She said to Taub." Then frowned at her boss, quietly drinking his morning beverage at the end of the table. "Look at him." She insisted. "He's swelling with smugness. Why don't you boys just salute and get it over-with?" She suggested, now completely frustrated with her male team mates odd behavior.

Taub had gone very still. He pushed his chair back and stood.

"Where are you going?" House asked with something more akin to genuine amusement than curiosity.

Thirteen's frown deepened even more. What was so funny this morning?

"To the bathroom." Taub said, holding one of the file folders in front of himself and just below the waist line.

"Okey-dokey." House said as Taub made a hasty exit from the room. "Have a good solo."

"What's wrong with you today?" Thirteen asked house. "You're acting even weirder than usual."

"Haven't gotten any today yet. You offering?"

"No, but I hear Wilson's single again." She dead-panned.

Lips pressed firmly together, House smiled a little and sipped his coffee. "So?" He looked around at his remaining team members. "Patient?"

XO

At dinner, Wilson changed into casual wear and spent some time cooking chicken enchilada's for dinner. "House." He shouted down the hall. "Food's ready."

"Make my extra hot."

"They're both hot." Wilson muttered and served up two plates of piping hot spicy chicken and pasta topped with Monterey cheese and tongue burning enchilada sauce.

House passed by Wilson as he seated himself, taking a sniff of the room's atmosphere. "Smell's good." He said.

Wilson dove into his dinner. White wine was sitting by in two of his mother's best crystal - a condo warming gift for her son, the doctor. Wilson opened his mouth. "Wow, that's on fire." He took a cooling sip of the vin'.

"Yup. A real hottie." House chewed, savoring the many flavors. "You're a culinary metro-man."

"Metro?"

"Yeah. Meaning you sure can cook - I could suck on this all night."

Wilson stared at his room mate. "Are you all right?"

"Um hm." House sniffed once or twice.

Wilson, eyes narrowed, went back to his meal.

XO

"Doctor Wilson."

Wilson turned to see nurse Jeremy walking beside him. One of the hospital's more flamboyant male nurses. "Yes?"

"Just wanted to congratulate you." Jeremy stuck out his hand, and Wilson took it on reflex. "Congratulate? For what?"

"Stop being modest. You dare to wear. We're all proud of you."

"Who's "we"?"

Jeremy sent him a parting wink. "The other club members. You wear it well, doc'."

Wilson watched the confused man walk away. Suddenly it dawned on him what the fellow may have been talking about. He sniffed his lab coat sleeve. Nothing there. But nothing didn't mean squat. Nothing could very well mean something.

"You bugger!"

House looked up from his mid-morning Internet porn break. "That's a really awful thing to say if we were in England."

"You ordered some, didn't you? You bought some of that damn stink and sprayed it on my clothes."

"But you smell so much more Wilson-y with it on."

"Wilson-y?"

"Yeah. Cute, soft, nice, honest, slightly paranoid, sexy, innocent, _do-able_. I couldn't help myself. Also, my penis couldn't help _it_-self."

"House, you're insane."

"No, just horny."

"That's not exactly breaking news. And you are _not_ horny for me."

House sighed, slumping shoulders displaying his disappointment in his naive, self defeating friend. "Why the hell _not_? Why can't I be horny for _you_?"

Wilson threw his arm around. "Because, because..."

"Because...?"

"Because we live together. Because we're friends, because we're not gay."

"Speak for yourself."

Wilson stopped, gaping at his friend of twenty years, certain he could not possibly have missed two decades of signs. "You mean you're...are you _gay_, House?"

"No."

"Then why - "

House slammed one palm down on his desk and got to his feet with the help of his cane. "Because I like you!" He shouted. "Because you like me, and why the hell shouldn't that be okay?"

"Because we're not gay."

"But you smell good enough to make me want to be." House said, almost muttering it.

Wilson ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up in the back in a comical tuft. "Well, I would think that at least being bisexual would have to be a prerequisite to sexually desiring your best friend."

"Is that a rule? Haven't you heard, Conan? Sexual is a spectrum."

"House. It's the cologne. It's not me."

"How do you know?" House asked reasonably. "How do you know it's not just bringing out the hottest parts of you and making _my part_ appreciative?"

Wilson shook his head back and forth, trying and failing to understand this new, weirder level of his friend. "You're nuts."

"Those, too."

Wilson held up his hands. "House - enough!" He left.

Plan A all shot to hell.

XO

House came in late and Wilson had already gone to bed. House looked in the fridge. Wilson hadn't even left him a dinner plate.

A long bath for his leg, and a good sleep were in order. House entered his bedroom, the bed still un-made. Wilson often took his revenge on the home front via domestic non-assault. No laundry done either. A good day of advancement had ended up a crappy day full of defeat and retreat.

The tiny bottles of love-potion stood on his dresser, their future uncertain. Was it his mind? Was it just that he himself was so lonely that finally reached the point where he'd go for anyone? Even folded socks, pressed-shirt, ironed tie, neurotic in almost every way Wilson?

House was a little shocked at himself. Emotions almost never ruled him, but lately he had gone with his guts, with his nose, and with his penis. "I am a man of science." He said aloud. The situation called for chemical analysis of a different kind. Not the lab, not a petri dish or microscope, but good, old fashioned field testing.

He took one of the bottles to the bathroom with him, ran a bath with the hottest water he could stand and poured the entire contents into the steaming pool. Stripping nude, House swung his left leg over the high tub side, and lifted the less mobile limb in with both hands. Easing sore bones and muscles down into the shockingly hot water, he sat back and waited for the brew to play it magic on his love life as the scalding water played it's magic on his body.

Or not.

XO

At breakfast, Wilson seemed as normal. In fact, rather than draping himself all over House's flesh, as House had anticipated, he seemed distracted and quiet. Not an entirely unusual state with his moody friend, but not exactly the response he had hoped for.

House sipped good coffee (Wilson always did brew the damned finest coffee), and watched his friend pick over his scrambled eggs, one sausage and a slice of that god-awfullest fruit - cantaloupe. "Are you still mad at me for the cologne incident?"

Wilson shook his head. He sat stiffly. Uncomfortable. Sullen. "No." He stood abruptly, the morning repast abandoned to the trash. Scraping the dish into the garbage - "I have to go in early."

House set his mug down, crestfallen. "You _are_ mad at me." Not a question. Not a statement. A certainty.

Wilson spun on him. "I'm not _mad_ at you."

Surprised at the sharpness in his tone, House looked away. His own poached egg-white and half a grapefruit (Wilson was concerned about his cholesterol level), thus far was untouched. "Oh. I guess your ear-popping volume must be playing tricks on my mind."

Wilson slipped into his suit jacket. Back to sullen. "House, for a change it's not you, okay?"

House gulped the last of his coffee. "Right." He grabbed his leather coat and waited for Wilson to lead them out the door to work. Wilson looked at him, his face a mix of surprise and trepidation. "You're coming _with_ me? A-aren't you taking your bike?"

House took up his cane and waited while Wilson opened the door and stepped through. "Thought I'd tag along, since we're going to the same address and all." He looked at his wrist watch. "At the same time, too."

Hastily shaking his head to dispel any lingering doubts his questions may have sparked in House's mistrustful mind - "No, no, okay. Good. Fine. Sure."

House followed Wilson to the elevator and down to the parking garage. Stupid cologne. It obviously didn't work on him, and in consequence didn't work on driving Wilson mad with perpetual hard-on's _for_ him. Different body chemistry he supposed. Maybe he'd send Maurice the perfume peddler a computer virus for his trouble, or a special shipment of skunk gland labeled for his nose only.

XO

At lunch, Wilson avoided the cafeteria. House looked for him in his office to find it empty. The nurses lounge held only nurses. The men's bathroom held only other, non-sexy smelling men.

House limped back to his own office and ate his sandwich alone.

At five o'clock, Wilson entered without warning and strode over to his desk. "You bought the cologne, didn't you?" He asked suddenly as House fingered his place in the text he'd been reading. "And you're wearing the stuff right now, am I right?"

House nodded, looking the slightest bit guilty. "All the good it did me."

"What do you mean?"

"Doesn't work. Body chemistry's different. What made me want to have wild sex with you, just made you royally pissed off at me. I'm throwing the other bottles out."

"How many did you buy?"

"Six. Four left."

"Do you really like me, House? I mean, in that way?"

House threw him an exaggerated, House-special scowl. "Duh!" He went back to his book muttering - "Oblivious, OCD-ified, idiotic..."

Wilson drew one hand to his mouth in an attempt to hide an amused smile, then he dropped the hand and chuckled. "House. It worked."

House frowned. Now he was sullen. Mad even. "Then why the hell have you avoided me all day? You've been acting like I'm Quasimodo's uglier cousin."

House noticed that Wilson had his lab coat buttoned all the way to the collar. It was hot in the hospital. No reason to have it buttoned up to the collar like that.

Wilson unbuttoned it, looked around to ensure the team was absent, and opened the coat. "Because I've been sporting a boner since breakfast, and I hoped that if I avoided you, it'd go away."

House looked down at the tent set up in Wilson's trousers. "Oh..." He looked again, his eyes wide. "...my."

Wilson closed the coat. "House, do you really want this, or this just some idle curiosity sprung from boredom that you need to satisfy or you'll go crazy and drive me even crazier?"

"Seventy-twenty."

"Seventy-twenty?"

"Seventy percent I want you - my decision entirely. Twenty percent Un Mignon Gai."

"That's ninety percent. What about the other ten?"

"Straight forward miscellaneous horniness."

Wilson smiled again. "Not so _straight_, though, now. So what do we do?"

House glanced down at Wilson's hidden tent. He smiled back. "We go camping."

Wilson smiled. "See you after work, Romeo. Oh, by the way, did you ever figure out what was wrong with your patient?"

"Yup. He'd just gone off anti-depressants and was unconscious from too much sex."

"_Too much_ sex?" Wilson asked. "Is there such a thing?"

"A side effect of anti-depressant withdrawal can be perpetual boners. He was literally knocked out by an orgasm. Something I hope to experience later tonight."

"House," Wilson grinned, "you're un homme fabuleux!"

XXXX

END


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